This invention relates generally to printed circuit boards, and more particularly, to printed circuit boards on which microelectronic components or chips are mounted. One desirable characteristic of printed circuit boards used for this purpose is that they should be mechanically stable under conditions of varying temperature. This is particularly important in circuit boards used to support microelectronic components housed in chip carriers.
Chip carriers are usually fabricated from a ceramic material, such as aluminum oxide, and are produced in the form of a hermetically sealed package for each chip. Bonded leads are brought out from the chip to the edges of the chip carrier, and the carrier is then usually soldered, by its leads, directly to a circuit board. The principal advantage of this structure is a significantly higher circuit density. Also, the use of shorter and more uniform lead lengths results in improved speed and impedance characterisitics. Another consideration is that the use of chip carriers substantially reduces the overall cost of a circuit package. Package size reductions as high as a five-to-one ratio can be obtained, compared with an equivalent dual in-line package construction.
A major drawback to the use of chip carriers is that the coefficient of thermal expansion of aluminum oxide, the most commonly used chip carrier material, is approximately one-half the coefficient of thermal expansion for glass/epoxy laminates typically used in the manufacture of circuit boards. When the resulting structure is exposed to any significant range of temperatures, the thermal cycling of the structure can crack soldered joints and render the circuit inoperative. One solution to this problem is to use an intermediate member between the chip carrier and the circuit board. The circuit board is sometimes referred to as a mother board, and the intermediate member as a baby board. The intermediate member may also take the form of a hybrid package on which the chip carrier is mounted. Another technique is to use a compliant lead structure between the chip carrier and the circuit board, although this clearly increases the cost of the package and results in inherently long lead lengths.
Accordingly, an ideal circuit board should have a coefficient of thermal expansion that closely matches that of chip carriers mounted on the board. If there is a substantial mismatch in coefficients of thermal expansion, the chip carrier may break loose from the board, or the electrical connections may be damaged.
Another difficulty that has arisen as larger numbers of components are mounted on circuit boards, is that the heat produced by the components must be dissipated in some manner, whether by conduction through the circuit board or by radiative, convective, or forced-air cooling. Since the principal materials used in circuit boards are insulators, the boards themselves have traditionally played no significant role in dissipating heat from the components that they support.
A third factor in the design of circuit boards is that they should ideally be of a material with a relatively low dielectric constant, to enhance the board's ability to propagate signals over relatively long distances.
Some materials, such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) have good dielectric properties but an undesirably high coefficent of thermal expansion. Kevlar (trademark of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc.) has a negative coefficient of thermal expansion, and may be used to reduce the average coefficient of thermal expansion in a composite circuit board structure. However, Kevlar is a poor thermal conductor, and therefore does nothing to enhance the thermal conduction properties of the board.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,954 issued to Jensen, proposes the use of a single thick layer of graphite reinforced with a resin, to adjust the coefficient of thermal expansion of a circuit board. The technique disclosed in the patent is to use a large bulk of graphite, such that the composite expansion coefficient approaches that of the graphite alone. However, the Jensen patent does not provide any solution to the increasing problem of heat dissipation.
It will be appreciated from the foregoing that there is an ever increasing need for a multilayer printed circuit board structure that addresses these problems. Specifically, the ideal circuit board structure should have low dielectric properties, a low or negative thermal coefficient of thermal expansion, and good thermal conduction properties to enhance heat conduction from devices mounted on the board. The present invention satisfies all of these needs.